


Twin Size Mattress

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Haylor friendship, M/M, Songwriting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2784551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a tabloid rumour regarding a large order of roses spurs Haylor hype, the former "couple" is forced to make contact to discuss how to handle it. Without the contract of a public relationship hanging over their heads, Harry and Taylor turn out to be fast friends, realising they may have more in common than they thought. You see, they're both pining for their best friends. And as musicians tend to do, they write songs about it. Together. Resulting in an album exploding with Larry and Kaylor feels. But how can two of the music industry's biggest names release an album spilling their secrets without breaking contract? Shenanigans ensue.... :)<br/>Endgame Larry and endgame Kaylor.<br/>Incredibly canon compliant. You have no idea. I made google calendars to keep track of these two dorks' busy schedules. If it were any more more canon compliant, Larry would be bullshit and Harry would be straight. Ha!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tuesday: 18/11/2014

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a thing: Harry is technically only 20 at this point in the story and a scene at the end of this chapter does take place in the United States and he does consume alcohol and I'm taking this moment to say I do not in any way condone or encourage underage drinking. Now that we've got that formality out of the way, enjoy!

_Tuesday, November 18, 7:55 AM, Orlando, FL, USA: Harry’s POV_

* * *

 Harry is thankful for the high security that comes with being a member of the biggest boy band in the world in moments like this, when no one has to know he ordered three children’s servings of Mickey Mouse pancakes to his hotel room in Orlando. They have chocolate chip eyes, a strawberry nose, and whipped cream in the ears. They are almost too cute to eat. Almost. He considers instagraming them but figures a black and white filter would detract from the adorableness of his colourful breakfast.

“Be down in an hour.” Mark tells him, hand on the door, halfway out already. “Lou needs to do hair and makeup before the Q&A panel.”

Harry nods. He shoves his fork into the whipped cream and holds it out in Mark’s direction with that shit-eating grin all the handlers have been warned against. “Want a bite?”

“Not at all. I had eggs and bacon already. That’s what real grownups eat for breakfast.”

“Hey!” Harry protests, holding his hand to his chest in a dramatic show of offense. “I am very much a real grown up!”

He thinks he looks convincing. His mouth is full of whipped cream and his feet are crossed in his lap in a stolen pair of Louis socks, the black ones with eyeballs on them, with three plates of Mickey Mouse pancakes in front of him and that white fleece blanket with the pink circles he’s had since the Up All Night tour draped over his shoulders like a cape. Harry thinks he is the spitting image of a real grown up.

Mark shakes his head but he’s smiling. “Nah. You’re faking it. You’re actually a toddler. I of all people would know. One hour. Don’t be late or I’ll get shit for it.”

Mark shuts the door behind him and the automatic lock makes a whirring noise as it bolts in place, then stops, leaving the huge hotel room in silence.

Harry’s face falls, but he swallows the whipped cream down and digs into his pancakes, slightly less excited about them with the busy schedule looming over his head.

A Q&A panel in two hours, then nonstop interviews and appearances until this evening. They’re giving a surprise concert for the fans in the park. It shouldn’t work. They’ve only just released the album Sunday. It’s been two days. That’s it. No one is supposed to know every word of the songs. But if there’s one thing the fans are it’s dedicated. He has a feeling they’ll be singing the words he wrote back to him by this evening, even if they’re some of the loyal few who didn’t listen when it leaked.

Suddenly, a strangely familiar guitar riff blasts through the room and he scrambles for his phone on the bedside table. Harry has a low tolerance for country music and he’s already had enough for one day, having woken up and listened to the entirety of the Kacey Musgraves album for probably the hundredth time while showering and admittedly dancing naked in the enormous hotel bathroom to Follow Your Arrow (can you really blame him?). This twangy ringtone is too much country, and too loud for this early in the morning.

As he reaches for the phone, two things happen: Tim McGraw launches into the chorus of “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” over the speaker of his phone and Harry slides his finger right across the screen without thinking about it, just as his early morning frazzled brain places a face with the song.

And shit. That was definitely Taylor’s face on the screen before he picked up the phone. That’s definitely the ringtone she set for herself way back in 2012. He hasn’t (thankfully) heard that stupid song for a solid two years.

And shit. He’s answered the phone and he needs to say something.

“Hello?” he mumbles. His mouth is full of Mickey Mouse’s left ear but he isn’t chewing. Harry is frozen in place, blanket falling off his shoulders, fork hovering somewhere between his mouth and the collection of plates at the foot of his bed. He’s afraid to move.

“Hi Harry. It’s Taylor.” Her voice comes through the line, sounding just like he remembers, and he is pretty certain his stomach drops all the way to his toes. The only consolation is she sounds at least half as uncomfortable as he feels right now. He swallows the half-chewed mouthful of pancake and stands up off the bed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Caller I.D. and all.”

“Oh, right. Well, I just wasn’t sure you still had my number, so...” she trails off. Harry is visibly cringing. This is so awkward. “You know. Just to be safe and all.” she adds. He nods. She can’t see him nod. Wow. This conversation is going swimmingly, he thinks to himself.

He runs a hand through his curls, still wet from the shower. “Sure. Yeah. What’s up?” It seems an odd thing to say to her, what with not having had a proper conversation in two years, but he doesn’t know what’s going on.

“I just figured I’d clear the air with you. Someone published something about you sending me 1,989 roses as, like, a congrats for the album or whatever. I thought I’d let you know that wasn’t me or my team that put that out there. I mean, we’re not looking into who did because I don’t really care, but if your team wants to deal with it, they can. The story’s getting more press than I initially thought it would, so I figured I’d just let you know it was going on.”

Oh. A business call.

“Thanks for the heads up, then. And congrats on the album, by the way. I won’t go so far as to buy you a whole flower shop but, you know. Nice job. It is quite good.” It might be the only thing he listened to on their flight to America. He might kind of know all the words to “Shake It Off”, and if that’s _not_ _entirely_ because it’s the only song Niall insists on playing in the car, no one has to know.

“Thank you.” Taylor says on the end of the line, and it sounds like she’s smiling. “So is yours, if I’m honest. Although I don’t know if it’s actually out yet. Is it? Sorry. The audio posts were on tumblr so I’ve heard a few tracks. It sounds amazing.”

He laughs, loosening up a bit. She was easy to talk with when they went out and that’s clearly still the case. “Thanks. Yeah we released it Sunday. But it leaked about a week before then.”

“Mine leaked a few days before release but my fans were pretty good about shutting the links down. Kind of scary how dedicated they are sometimes. Gotta love ‘em. I’m sure you know all about that, though,” she laughs over the line.

His thoughts go immediately to the swarms of teenage girls that are probably camped out in the lobby of the hotel as they speak. “Yeah, I think half the fanbase knew all the words by release day. But sales are doing really well so I can’t complain.” 

“Well congratulations, then.”

“Yeah. Same to you.”

The line is silent for a few seconds, then she speaks up again.

“And thanks, I mean. I saw what you said in that interview, about how it’s hypocritical to say I can’t write songs about exes. It was helpful.” She sounds almost unsure, but at least one of them has the balls to address the elephant in the room.

He smiles. “Of course. And I stand by it.”

“Thank you. It’s one thing for me to say it, but it’s another for the subject of the songs to come out and say it’s okay. People take it more seriously, is all.”

“So they are about me then? I mean, I figured, but…” They’ve skipped over the elephant in the room and gone straight for the great blue whale. Lovely. This wasn’t the conversation he thought he’d start his morning with.

“Yeah. Some more than others. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you.” There’s something in her voice when she says that. He has no idea what that means. But okay.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let it go to my head.”

“I’m glad.”

Harry sighs and returns to his pancakes, one leg folded under him on the bed. He digs out the chocolate chip eyes and lets them melt in his mouth while he looks down at the monster his blind Mickey Mouse pancake has become.

“Did it help?” he asks her, “Writing them out, I mean?”

“Yeah. It always does. It’s kind of weird to preform them or hear them back now. You know, like once you’re over someone, to have to go back and sing those words that you wrote when you were in a totally different mindset. It’s strange.”

Harry makes an affirmative noise through his chewing. He kind of gets it. He’s done a ridiculous amount of songwriting on his own, some of it making it on the albums. It’s never helped anything, though. It just makes it worse.

“But it’s kind of a good strange,” she continues, “like an empowering thing, I guess, because it reminds you how far you’ve come.”

Harry stabs a strawberry more forcefully than is probably necessary. “That’s great. I wish I knew what you meant. That sounds amazing.” He’s not bitter. Not at all. (Maybe a little.) He just wishes his feelings for Louis would go away. It’s been four years and they’ve only gotten stronger. And no matter how many times he performed Happily on tour, he only saw how much further in love he’d fallen since writing it, not how much further he’d come on the long and impossible road to getting over him. Because the truth was, he got nowhere.

“What do you mean?” she asks. “You write love songs all the time. I’m sure one of them has helped.”

“Yeah, I write them, but they’re never break up songs, you know? They’re what-if songs. Like, they’re never about people I’ve actually been with, so writing and performing them only makes it harder. It’s kind of masochistic if I’m honest. But it’s not like I can write about anything else, so I’m kind of stuck.”

“Louis?”

His heart catches in his throat. She didn’t—

“What?” he asks. He was not that obvious. There’s no way. Nope. No way whatsoever.

“Sorry. Just…rumours, you know? I’m sorry I brought it up.” She sounds genuinely sorry, but his heart is still racing. “It’s just, you know I’ve been on tumblr more these days because I’m using it to interact with fans. So sometimes I see some stuff on there.”

“And by stuff you mean…?” Harry knows exactly what she means.

“You’re going to actually make me own up to looking at the Larry Stylinson tag aren’t you?”

He resists the urge to laugh. “Yup.”

She laughs instead. “Sorry about that. It’s easy to get sucked in sometimes. A few fans sent me links once. It's a little weird”

“No worries. It’s a weird situation.”

“Wait…is it true then?”

“No, no. Not at all.” And it isn’t. That’s just his problem. “Don’t worry. We’re definitely not in a secret relationship.”

“But?” she pushes further.

Harry knows that tone. That’s the “tell me everything” tone. The one Gemma used with him after he got home from the first dance he took a date to. She’d been waiting in the living room with cold pizza and a carton of ice cream, season three of Friends paused at the beginning of the title sequence, and that crazy slumber-party-gossip look in her eyes. He knew he was dead meat the minute he stepped in the door. But now that Taylor is egging him on with that same tone, now that he has details he actually kind of might want to spill, he doesn’t feel so cornered. Maybe—

“But…maybe we should get together for coffee so I can fill you in.” he concedes.

“Okay now I’m intrigued. I’m down. When are you in New York?” she asks.

“We’re in Orlando for now but we’ll actually be in the city to film a ton of TV appearances on Wednesday and Thursday. I think after Jimmy Kimmel we’re off for a few days before the AMA's. We could meet up Sunday for brunch or something? I don’t know where, though. Don’t want to add fuel to the 1989 roses fire.”

“Oh gosh no. Definitely not. You could come by my place for brunch. I can text you the address if you’d like.”

“Sounds good to me. I should get going. I have pancakes to eat and I’m supposed to be at hair and makeup in a half hour.” Harry says, glancing at the clock on the nightstand.

“Have fun?”

Harry grimaces, not looking forward to Lou berating him on not properly moisturizing or something. Maybe tonight he’d be up for it, but at 9 in the morning it’s not the spiel he needs to hear. “Maybe.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon then.”

“Right. Yeah. It was good to hear from you.” And he means it.

“You too.” He thinks she probably means it, too.

* * *

  _Tuesday, November 18, 8:35 AM, New York, NY, USA: Taylor’s POV_

* * *

Karlie is in California for a Vogue shoot, but her dirty dishes are in the sink.

The kitchen is a mess from her latest baking storm. She came home from Paris, spent 48 hours replicating some bizarre apricot scone she tried in a café there, and then left for Malibu, leaving Taylor with what may be every kitchen item they own piled up in the sink and enough scones to feed a small army in the fridge.

Taylor throws her phone on the couch after texting management, letting them know she gave Harry the heads up, and bites into what is totally not the third scone she’s had this morning. 

Meredith is curled up on the couch, purring in that spot she likes near the window where the sun hits. The radio is playing softly, some morning show on XM that only plays acoustic covers, and Taylor has absolutely nowhere she needs to be all day for the first time in so long. It’s wonderful.

So naturally she spends the whole morning on tumblr, ignoring the pile of dishes in the sink until she gets up for lunch and realizes there’s not even a clean spoon that she can use instead of a fork, because there are no clean forks either, so she eats cold pasta out of a tupperware container with her fingers and gives Meredith a piece. Dishes can wait. She has fans online that need her to keep scrolling. Or that’s what she tells herself. 

The house is quiet without Karlie, even with the radio playing in the background.

They've lived together less than a year, but Taylor still feels wrong every time Karlie flies out to some exotic location for a photo shoot and leaves her sitting in silence, like Karlie packs a part of Taylor in her suitcase and the farther Karlie flies, the more Taylor notices she's all of a sudden missing the part of her that gets her out of bed in the morning. And it isn't that she needs Karlie to be there, exactly. It's just that it's so much easier, so much better, when she is. 

But it's been a while since Taylor's had a _real_ best friend. Maybe she's just forgotten what it's like to appreciate someone so much. 

Meredith walks over the couch, making sure not to take her claws in as she crosses Taylor's thighs, and sits down on the warm keyboard of the laptop. 

* * *

 

_Tuesday, November 18, 10:00 PM, Orlando, FL, USA: Harry's POV_

* * *

 "Get some sleep, boys. You put on a good show. We fly out early tomorrow so don't stay up too late." 

"Night, Mark! Sleep tight! Don't let the bedbugs bite!"

Mark’s poker face is impressive as he replies, "Go to bed, Niall," and moves to shut the door.

"We promise he'll be the first of us to fall asleep." Liam laughs, throwing his leather jacket on the desk (and really, who needs a desk at a hotel in Universal Studios? Harry doubts this place is popular amongst businessmen).

"That's what I'm afraid of." Mark laughs, and the door is shut and he's gone. 

It's not something they've done in ages, since it's no longer an issue of cost. If need be, they could probably have free reign of the entire hotel for the night and each boy could have a floor to himself. But sometimes it's nice to cram all five of them in one presidential suite and get on each other's nerves as the night grows old. Maybe exhaust the minibar. Harass room service at three in the morning. Fame is fleeting and they might as well enjoy it while it lasts, which means less sleep and more fun, as was the Up All Night tour philosophy. These days it’s just every now and then. It keeps nights like these feeling special.

"Right, lads. You know the drill. Beer first." Niall says, passing out bottles from the mini bar. Harry takes his and sheds his ridiculously long trench coat, draping it over a chair before kicking his boots off by the door. He opens his bottle on the bathroom counter and then joins the rest of the boys. It's not that he doesn't enjoy nights like these when they happen. He does, he just needs to psych himself up for them sometimes or he'd make some excuse about a headache and turn in early in a room down the hall. But he knows it's good for him. And it's good for the group. So he grins and bears it and takes a sip of his beer before curling up in one of the ridiculously large and expensive looking chairs.

“Did your remember the red bull this time?” Zayn asks, glaring pointedly at Niall.

Niall throws up his hands in mock defense, before gesturing toward the plastic 7-11 bag where the drinks supposedly were. “It’s not my fault you guys are too weak to sober up when you need to. That one was on you, not me. But yes, I did.”

Harry throws his head back, hitting the back of the fancy chair, as he laughs. “That one was in the tabloids, is what it was. We can’t all be Irish, man.” he says, recalling some undesirable pap pictures of him being published on his way to an airport a few months ago where he was decidedly wasted after a night much like the one they have in store for tonight, just minus the caffeine at the end. He’d gotten an earful from Magee after that. Something about his image and young impressionable fans and "you can't even legally drink in America!" He tuned it out. 

“You can try. Drink up. We have a whole mini fridge of free liquor to get through.” Niall says. He sounds thrilled. Niall is always thrilled about drinking and thrilled about the five of them hanging out together and thrilled about life and sometimes he's too idealistic or optimistic or whatever you want to call it, but it's endearing. Naive, but endearing nonetheless. 

Harry chuckles, shaking his head, before downing nearly half of his beer in one go. It’s been a long day. Too many interviews (one on a rollercoaster for christ's sake), too much filming, too many screaming fans, and he hasn’t felt normal. He hasn’t felt like himself. It happens sometimes, with the fame and everything. It changed the space around him faster than he had time to change himself. So there are days when he feels so out of place. Days when he still can’t understand why anyone would cry over the chance to take a photo with him, let alone watch the TV special they just finished filming. It’s surreal. It always has been and Harry has a feeling it always will be.

“What do we want to hear, boys?” asks Louis. He’s untangling the mess of wires and cords that are attached to the tiny Mickey Mouse-shaped speakers on either side of the beds, looking for the iPhone jack at the end of the tangle.

“I don’t even care, mate, just something that’s not us. I’ve been hearing this bloody album for months and I love it but enough is enough.” Liam says, one arm draped over his face as he stretches out on the bed. This information is, of course, not helpful in Louis' mission to put something on.

“C’mon. Someone has to care what I play. Watch, I’ll put on opera and then you’ll be sorry.” he smirks. 

“Louis, come off it. We know you don’t have opera on your iPod.” Zayn says.

Louis doesn’t reply. He raises an eyebrow impossibly high, though, and crouches down near the plug, scrolling through his phone on a mission. Harry can’t help but stare. He’s only human. Because Louis’ concentrating so much on proving Zayn wrong and his little tongue is poking out of the left side of his lips that are pressed in an impossibly straight line across his face and it’s just so goddamn cute. Sue him. And his hair is still down, like it was all day today after Louis had evaded Lou and her bottle of hairspray this morning. And seeing Louis like this, with his hair falling whichever way it wants, with that weird slight wave it’s got in it because of the humidity, is almost too much.

Louis’ eyes light up with a grin as he finds the song he wants. Although it doesn’t show completely on his mouth, Harry can see the edges of his lips tug slightly and Harry doesn’t even care that the boys are still in the room or that there is an impossibly large distance between him and Louis that includes a couch and a coffee table, or that Louis has a girlfriend who he’s supposed to like. Harry wants to kiss him so badly.

He’s saved from doing something stupid when the first notes of what Harry will never tell anyone he knows to be L'amour est un Oiseau Rebelle blast through the speakers. Stop looking at him like that. It's not like he spends his free time listening to entire operas. He just knows this specific song. It's a good song. And Louis has proven his point to Zayn. Harry is nothing if not amused. 

Louis sits back on his heels, smirking at Zayn as he holds up the screen for all to see, definitely his music app, not some random youtube clip he’s dug up on the fly, and Louis has won as usual. Harry loses it for a minute, staring at the hollows of Louis' cheeks, covered in light stubble because he didn't shave this morning.

Sometimes he can’t believe how different he looks from the day Harry first met him. 18-year-old Louis’ cheekbones could not cut glass and his jawline did not make Harry’s thoughts wander down beard burn related tangents. But he loved 18-year-old Louis just as much as he loves the stunningly handsome man in front of him. Sometimes the sheer weight of it all is difficult for Harry to fathom. Sometimes it’s too much, all at once. He is in love with 18-year-old Louis and 22-year-old Louis and every single Louis that came in between, and all the stories of Louis’s that came before, and he knows that theoretically he has enough love to go around to the infinite stretch of Louis’s that wont ever acknowledge it, but he’s exhausted and worn thin from loving so much all at once, all the time.

And the longer Harry stares at that tiny sunspot on Louis’ cheek, the more he thinks how it would be so much easier if Louis could just take some of it off his chest every now and then. If Harry could just tell him, every few days or so, “hey man, you’re gorgeous and I’m so incredibly in love with you right now”, that it would be like letting the air out of a balloon little by little, and he might start to feel like he isn’t flying in every direction all at once when he thinks about him.

He snaps out of his Louis-induced reverie (can you really blame him?) and Niall is standing on the mattress with one hand over his heart and the other raised dramatically in front of him as he pantomime's the sorrowful operatic tale he thinks he is telling. Harry decides not to tell him what the woman is actually singing about. It's funnier this way. 

“Oi! Harry! Are those my socks?” Louis yells over the crescendo of a full orchestra and Carmen’s bone-shattering vibrato and Harry is caught red-handed. Red-footed? Technically they aren’t red, they’re black with eyeballs all over, but you get the picture.

“No they are not.” Harry lies, but he’s smiling and taking them off, balling them up and throwing them at Louis’ too-perfect face. Louis is smiling and shaking his head but Harry knows it’s not the same. It doesn’t feel the same. That’s not the fond smile Louis used to save for Harry. It’s just a smile. And Harry’s okay with that, he is. Really.

He finishes his beer before the song ends.

Now most people, most normal people, would inform their close friends if they plan on meeting up with an ex-girlfriend in a few days for brunch or what have you. Most people would mention it and then wait for their friends to get that look in their eyes that's a mix of vicarious scandal and curiosity. And then most people would discuss every possible ulterior motive, anything that might go wrong. It's just what friends do.

So Harry toys with the idea of bringing it up with them all night long. He nearly does when Liam asks what they plan on doing in New York when they aren't filming, but Niall answers right away and goes off on a tangent and the moment is gone, so Harry decides it's best to keep it from them for now. Nothing may come of it. He probably won't ever need to mention it. No big deal. 

Harry gets off the chair around three in the morning to find some socks of his own because his toes have been cold the moment he took Louis' socks off. Niall's most recent round of shots makes his head cloudy as he shuffles through his weekender bag, but he finds a pair of Gemma's socks that he nabbed from her that are fuzzy and blue and pull halfway up his calves so he grabs them and settles back down in his chair, watching his friends move around him, change around him, while he sits there, not moving, not changing, letting that weird feeling of detachment come over him before falling asleep in a position that will definitely make his back hurt in the morning. 


	2. Wednesday: 19/11/2014

_Wednesday, November 19, 6:57 AM, New York, NY, USA: Taylor's POV_

* * *

 When Taylor wakes up, she has four missed calls and thirteen texts from Ellie. It’s early. She shouldn’t have to get up. Her alarm hasn’t even gone off yet. So she sits up and drags the cat into her lap instead.

“Where’s Meredith?” Taylor asks, looking deadpan into the eyes of a cat, like she expects an answer. Olivia refuses to make eye contact and is instead very interested in the drawstring of the hoodie Taylor threw on last night when she couldn’t be bothered to turn the heat up. Olivia quickly loses interest and squirms out of Taylor’s arms.

“Don’t leave me. I feed you. Come back and keep my lap warm.” she whines. Only Olivia’s tail can be seen as she slips out the bedroom door. “You’re useless and I don’t love you.” Taylor yells half-heartedly.

Instead of getting out of bed, she unlocks her phone. Last night’s texts from Ellie are on the screen:

_\--i have a couple tickets for the 1975 in LA tomorrow. u in town?_

_\--txted Selena and it sounds like she can come. u in?_

_\--it’d be sick if you’d come. i’ll hold a ticket for u but give me a heads up._

\--answer your phoooooneeeee please??

_\--i’m just going to assume you’re coming. 7pm @ palladium._

_\--we’re eating at the marmont before and probs getting ready there too fyi_

_\--ugh please come. she’s been moping about he-who-must-not-be-named and i can’t get her to stop_

_\--it’s driving me insane._

_\--you are in town, right? i assumed since the ama’s are in a few. but if you aren’t that’s okay. i’ll just enjoy my really awesome tickets without you._

Taylor nearly responds with the excuse that she’s still in New York, but she needs to be in Los Angeles by Sunday night anyways. So really it couldn’t hurt to show up a few days early. Right? Right.

_\--i’ll be there. how do you feel about scones? i have too many._

She apologises to Olivia for her harsh words before she leaves both the cats with the nice old lady downstairs that watches them sometimes while she's away and who has no idea who she is. 

* * *

  _Wednesday, November 19, 3:40 PM, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Taylor's POV_

* * *

 She lands at 3 pm and it’s sunny. Los Angeles in November is a different world compared to the thirty degrees and frosty sidewalks she left behind in New York City. She unlocks her phone. It still feels odd to suddenly be allowed to click on Harry’s name in her list of contacts. It rings twice before he picks up.

“Hello?” 

“Hi! You’re in New York, yeah?” she asks, feeling slightly bad for realising only halfway through her flight that she’d have to alter their plans.

“Yup. You’re not.” From anyone else, that comment may sound snappy. Harry just sounds amused.

“What?”

“Sorry. That’s sort of creepy. It’s just Lottie’s been hanging out with me today and she has google alerts set up for you. She’s a huge fan.”

“Oh, right. Wow that’s so weird. They act fast. I landed less than an hour ago.”

“Wow. I'm sorry.” He sounds genuinely sorry, and he probably gets it. He is, after all, Harry Styles. His fans get google alerts if he so much as sneezes. 

“It’s okay. Comes with the job.” she says. 

“Occupational hazard.” Harry agrees. That's one way to look at it. 

“Something like that. But yeah, Ellie wanted me to fly out and help her handle a very upset Selena Gomez. Bribed me with concert tickets.”

“Sounds like a fair trade to me. Who are you seeing?”

“The 1975.”

“Ooh. More than fair.” 

“Yup. Matt Healy’s…something.” 

“You’re telling me.” Okay then. 

“Have you seen them live?” she asks, moving her phone to her other ear and fishing around in her purse for her wallet as her taxi pulls up to the curb.

“Kind of.” Harry replies. “I’ve written with him. Not anything serious or complete. Just brainstorming. He’s brilliant. Kind of pretentious and scary but in a good way.”

She laughs and hands the driver two twenties. “That sounds accurate and I haven’t even met him.”

“Yeah. I think you’d like him. I like him, at least. So are we still on for Sunday? I can be in LA by then. In fact, I probably should be in LA by then. I need to be in by that evening.”

“Of course we're still on. I’ll figure something out. There’s a lot of good restaurants around here but I kind of want to cook. Plus you’re always here so you’ve probably been to all the places worth eating at anyways.”

“I’m a walking garbage disposal. You know that. I’ll eat anything you'll feed me. Want me to bring something? We can go halvsies on the cooking and make it easier.”

“Halvsies.” she mocks. “Yeah, that sounds good. We can figure it out later though. I have to lug all my bags up this really stupid driveway first because the hotel doesn’t want the main entrance too near to the street. It’s a good idea in theory but not the most practical.” she says, staring longingly at the entrance through the cab window, knowing she should probably step out, while the doorman just looks at her from far away, never breaking eye contact, but not really moving to be in any way helpful to her plight. 

Harry is laughing on the other end, she can tell, but his hand is covering the receiver so it’s muffled.

“Okay. Dessert’s on you. I’ll do the dirty work.” he says.

“Gotcha.” 

“I’ll let you go. Good luck with your journey to the front door. Enjoy the concert! Give Selena an empathetic pat on the head for me if you feel so inclined.”

She shakes her head, smiling. “You’re so weird. But I might, just for you.”

“Farewell.” Harry practically sings it down the line, but hangs up before Taylor has a chance to juggle everything she’s carrying and reach the end call button herself. Sometimes it amazes her how much Harry’s grown up but not changed at all. It’s been years and he’s now the kind of person that offers to bring a dish to a lunch but still says things like halvsies and “empathetic pat on the head”. He's a strange one. 

The sidewalk is the kind that sparkles in the sunlight as if someone’s mixed a jar of glitter into the concrete. But it’s covered in old gum and piss stains and Taylor smells city the moment she steps out of the cab in front of the Chateau Marmont hotel.

And she gets it. She really does. She’s rich and famous and so are Ellie and Selena and they can afford to stay in nice places with great security but if they’re just here for a night, is it really necessary to pull out all the stops like this? Sometimes it’s exhausting and Taylor is really just a songwriter from Nashville who would be perfectly content with a Holiday Inn and a continental breakfast. When she was little, hotels were different. She got to spread out in a new space for a night and make it her own. They were comfortable and exciting and new. But these days she feels out of place under sheets that are crisper than her own and air that smells like someone else’s laundry detergent and carpets that are suspiciously stain-free.

Taylor is out of breath from climbing the steep driveway to the door when Ellie meets her in the lobby and they don’t say anything until they’re in the elevator.

“So scones?” Ellie asks.

"Yeah. I brought like twenty of them. Karlie made way too many and then she just left them all so I've been living off them for days. They're amazing."

"Why did she make so many?"

"Why not?"

"Because there's only two of you?"

"You can't bake two scones. That's just pathetic. Besides, she was experimenting. She didn't have the recipe but she wanted to make them like one she tried in Paris, so there were some trial and error batches at first. I ate most of those, though. She said they weren't right but I thought they were fine." They were amazing and gone before Karlie even left. 

"Of course you did. You're you. You'd eat dog food if she made it."

"Probably." Taylor nods. Ellie's not wrong. She's seen fancy expensive dog biscuits for sale that people can eat if they want to. That's a cool idea. She should mention it to Karlie sometime. 

She texts Harry the address to the LA house and messes around on her phone for a bit while Selena’s in the shower. 

She hasn’t checked Instagram since taking off in New York, so she has a pretty substantial amount of pictures of healthy rice bowls and cute cats to scroll through. But she pauses at a picture of a light yellow old convertible car parked on a sea cliff in the corner of the frame that was mostly just vast blue ocean. It was beautiful. And it was Karlie. Well, Karlie posted it, at least. It was from Malibu and she'd captioned it "California Dreaming", because of course she did. 

Taylor realises she hasn’t actually called Karlie to let her know she's in town. They're meeting up to go to the AMA’s together on Sunday but Taylor was supposed to be in New York until then.

Karlie has no reason to go to the AMA's but she makes a fun +1 and it's kind of a best friend rule that she's going. They hadn’t actually explicitly discussed it. The first time it came up, Taylor just asked Karlie what she was wearing to the event so she could plan accordingly. If Karlie was shocked at the indirect invitation, she didn’t let on. She just smiled.

Taylor likes the photo and keeps scrolling. When Karlie posts, she does it all at once. So naturally, there are five pictures all in a row beneath it.

The next one is a sky blanketed in soft white altocumulus clouds with the sun streaming through in the corner giving the clouds a soft yellow glow that fades to a light blue in the opposite corner of the frame. “California sunshine. 66 degrees in November #ICouldGetUsedToThis ☀❤☀ Sorry NYC you’re just too cold” reads the caption. Taylor makes a mental note to take Karlie to LA on vacation more often when the two of them have more time off. She can even let her keep some of her summer stuff in the LA house if she wants. For practical reasons, of course. Less packing to do when they visit.

Next is a picture either taken in the late afternoon or late morning, with the sun coming in at a hard slant, shining off six glass jars of KarlieKookies lined up on a wall overlooking the beautiful hills of Malibu. “Sun-kissed Kookies! Feeding the Vogue crew with a healthy wholesome snack on set! #regram from @voguemagazine ☀❤☀” reads the caption. Taylor can picture Karlie walking around the set with armfuls of cookies, coercing models to eat their weight in them before being photographed. It's the kind of thing Karlie is all about and honestly, it's amazing. Taylor is already working with the Victoria’s Secret crew for the fashion show and the diets and workouts some of those models agree to, while not unhealthy, don't sound fun in the least. Leave it to Karlie to sneak cookies into the Victoria’s Secret diet.

The next one is Karlie holding (or trying to hold, since she clearly took the picture and only had one free hand and a small one at that) an enormous jar of KarlieKookies against a bright red backdrop. “I’m SO excited to share the newest addition to the @Karlieskookies family! Meet the #CocoKookie -- @ChristinaTosi and I have been hard at work creating the delicious GF/Vegan coconut, maple kookie recipe (now available through @MomoMilkBar)! Best of all, every CocoKookie purchased benefits @CFDA’s work to support the next generation of young American fashion designers.” And that’s right, Taylor thinks. She was announcing that today. She remembers tasting so many versions of these. She ate them until she was sick and then kept going. Apparently the justification that they were, in theory, healthy, was not enough for her stomach. At the end of the day, 20 kookies are still 20 cookies. A shame, really. 

The last picture is just a shot of Karlie’s hands held up in the shape of a heart in front of probably one of the greatest views of the ocean Taylor's ever seen, taken up atop a hill so you can see the ocean's horizon in the distance, not a single wave breaking the surface. Perfectly still. She stares at it for longer than probably makes sense as she finishes another one of those stupidly delicious apricot scones, even if it is a bit stale after traveling across the nation.

“You okay?”

Taylor glances up from her phone and sees Ellie looking at her expectantly, one eyebrow raised in a question.

“What?”

Ellie grabs a scone and breaks off a piece to eat. Honestly, who does that? Just bite the darn thing. Taylor's asked before. It's something about not wanting to mess up her lipstick. It's a lost cause, really. Anyone who wears red lipstick as often as Taylor knows the trick is not to avoid messing it up, but to constantly reapply. It's a pain in the butt but it's worth it. 

Ellie swallows her bite and gestures with the rest of her scone at the phone in Taylor's hand. “Whatcha lookin’ at there? You seem pretty interested.”

“No, it’s just Instagram. Karlie had a shoot in Malibu today.”

“Oh cool.”

Taylor nods. She wants to say more about it but Ellie doesn’t prompt her to and she feels weird rambling about how cool the premise of the shoot is or how great it is that the weather cooperated as well as it did or that Karlie apparently texted her a bunch of partly cloudy emojis before posting the picture of the clouds.

That all stays in her head as Selena comes out of the shower wrapped, somehow, in three fluffy hotel towels, and jerks her thumb in the direction of the bathroom to tell Taylor she can have a go. So Taylor saves her comments about Karlie for later, or never, in favour of washing off the smell of airplane. Private jet or not, she always ends up smelling like industrial plastic and men’s cologne and it’s the worst. So she rinses it off and stops thinking about the image of Karlie’s hands in the shape of a heart and spends most of her shower debating between two of the black tops she brought in her carry-on for this evening.

Ultimately, she goes with the lace one. Some days a girl just needs to wear a black lace top that she can't even reasonably wear a bra with and not think too much about what her best friend’s hands have been up to that day. She shoots Karlie a text to let her know she’s in town as the hair straighteners heat up on the countertop and she offers Selena a scone.

All she gets in reply from Karlie before they leave for the Palladium is a single green heart emoji, but it suffices. 


End file.
